Are they referring to, Manny Gambino?
Also, wasn't Carlo married to his 1st cousin?.....I am not totally sure what the odds are for having a child born with issues when blood is mixed so close. I know that the odds are extremely high when brothers and sisters have children.
A little off topic, but marriage between cousins has found any possible increase in health issues to be statistically insignificant from totally unrelated individuals. Not that I'm interested in dating one of my cousins, but there was a big study that came out in 2002 that was actually very interesting. They examined studies from 1965-2000 and found between unrelated individuals the rate of serious birth defects was 1.7-2.8% and between first cousins it was 3-4% which is statistically insignificant. There are like 20 or so states where it's legal to marry your first cousin. And it's not just like the joke where it's Appalachia and the south. Just spread out all across the country. Sorry that's off topic.
I don't think there is much danger when first cousin marriage is a rare case,but when it's the norm issues can arise. I've read that in the UK where a high percentage of people of Pakistani descent marry their first cousins they have a much higher rate of having children born with birth defects and disabilities.
The last Habsburg king of Spain because of the marriage of relatives had the protruding chin and had difficulty in eating and talking, he also had difficulty walking but was not mentally retarded, I think if there is only one marriage between cousins in a family isn't serious.
The serious and pernicious thing, and if there are more marriages between relatives in the same family.
Then if a family is a carrier of hereditary diseases, it should be forbidden by law to marry cousins.
